Turtle Neck Warmers?

So this isn’t really a blog-worthy blog, because numerous Google and Bing searches do not give me answers to the questions I have. Anyhow I shall write about this “amazing story” idea anyways. Two weeks ago I travelled up to Minneapolis for a cousin’s wedding. The wedding took place in front of Turtle fountain at Lyndale Park, and I couldn’t help but immediately be drawn to the turtles. They were wearing hand-crafted neck warmers. They looked like they were knit, but still it was June, so why on earth would a metal turtle need a neck warmer??? Could a random person (like the members of HDH) make a crocheted neck warmer for these turtles, or other statues perhaps closer to home??? Alas there are no answers to this blog and I guess this is yet another one of my crochet fails…

Crochet Fail - Wire Jewelry

About a month ago I took a visit to my local library and decided to take a detour over to the crochet books. I was in the mood to try something new, and I became super excited when I stumbled upon Crochet with Wire, a book by Nancie Wiseman that had multiple jewelry patterns inside. The next day I went to Michael's where I found their bead/wire section had a 40% off sale! All signs were pointing that this was going to be a great addition to my hobby.

Crocheting with wire is quite a bit different - there are new terms to learn and different materials to use. Once I entered Michael's I was a bit overwhelmed, but glad that I took this new book in with me. I had to figure out what gauge of wire I needed, and not only did I need to know the difference between a 5/0 and an 8/0 size bead, but I also needed to know where to find this information on the beads! (I feel this could have been more obvious.) So with my 40% off sale I purchased everything I needed to get started.

...then reality set in. I found crocheting with the wire, odd. If you make a mistake on a stitch, it's hard to get out and forever kinked (however, they do have a smoothing tool you can buy). I practiced with a tight stitch, an average stitch and with a loose stitch but never seemed to find my groove. Adding beads were easy, but perhaps too time consuming for me as they need to be pre-strung before crocheting in the correct count and color order. I took a break for a day and picked it up the next day, took another break and tried again. Finally this past weekend I returned all my unused 'crochet with wire' items...

Overall I didn't like my end result, and I didn't feel like investing more time mastering this new art was worth it. Perhaps if I had practiced a bit more, and not been obsessed with immediate perfection I would have enjoyed it, but as you can see from the picture below, this looks like a bracelet curling and curling around, however it's supposed to be a necklace.

Despite being wire, this can't be forced to lay straight.

I mainly disliked two things about crocheting with wire - my inconsistent stitch and the way the necklace would not lay flat. The two patterns I tried were aimed for beginner's, but I just didn't like how mine looked.

In addition to this necklace pattern being wavy it would not lay flat.

Perhaps in a few years I'll try and crochet with wire again...